Mobile phone and internet services remained suspended for nearly 50 hours between 04-07 October in Islamabad/Rawalpindi amid opposition party PTI’s protest rallies. There were unconfirmed reports of partial disruptions of internet and social media apps in Lahore and Karachi.

Hundreds of PTI workers gathered in Islamabad over the weekend demanding release of their incarcerated leader Imran Khan. However, the government blocked entry points of Islamabad ahead of the protests to prevent them from entering the city. Clashes were also reported between PTI workers and law enforcement authorities resulting in injuries to 80 police officers and arrests of PTI workers. There were also speculations of PTI leader and KP Chief Minister’s Ali Amin Gandapur’s detention after he arrived in Islamabad with a convoy of 800 PTI activists from Peshawar to join the protest. Later, he mysteriously resurfaced in Peshawar after 31 hours denying any kidnapping or arrest by local authorities.

Al Jazeera reported on Pakistan’s development and planned implementation of its internet “firewall”, in an attempt to regulate and monitor the internet activities of users across Pakistan. Internet slowdowns and disruptions across Pakistan since July of this year have been attributed to trial runs of the firewall, though the Pakistani government has officially denied this being the case, instead blaming a number of factors, including underwater internet cables and “too many” people using VPNs within Pakistan.

Pakistan’s current attempt at a firewall incorporates Chinese technology (at a cost of 20-30 billion Pakistani rupees – or between US$ 72 to US$ 107 million) owing to that nation’s successful crackdown on freedom of expression online. According a source interviewed by Al Jazeera article, the new Pakistani firewall – once fully implemented – differs from previous attempts as the Chinese technology can allow the government to regulate and tackle websites and apps at a “granular level”. What the latter entails, as an ISP official told Dawn, is that the government can now block or restrict “access to single video or article”. Testing this new system usually takes place in a “sandboxed environment”, but the manner in which Pakistan’s internet system has been put together from tech sourced from numerous countries has meant that a large scale “live” test was needed, which the ISP official said explains the detrimental impact on internet speeds and access.

A tweet by the CEO and a founder of Nayatel, an internet service provider based out of Islamabad, claimed that electricity had been cut off in Islamabad’s Blue Area, the city’s major commercial area, and where “multiple data centers serving lifeline data and internet are located”, suggesting an attempt at an internet and telecoms blackout, possibly related to the PTI protests. Though power was eventually restored, the tweet noted that the private sector power company responsible for Islamabad, IESCO, did not respond for several hours, in spite of numerous calls and “personal visits” to their offices.